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8/4/2019 Virno Soviets of the Multitude[1]
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46 Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo Virno
Paolo Virno is one of the most radical
and lucid thinkers of the postoperaist
political and intellectual tradition. Of
all the heterodox Marxist currents,
postoperaismohas found itself at the
very center of debates in contemporary
philosophy. Its analytics of post-Ford-
ist capitalism refer to Wittgensteins
philosophy of language, to Heideggerand hisDaseinsanalysis, to German
philosophical anthropology, and
to Foucault and Deleuze with their
problematization of power, desire and
control apparatuses. Subjectivity, lan-
guage, body, affects or, in other words,
life itself, are captured by this regime
of post-Fordist production. These ab-
stract concepts and discourses have
entered the reality of contemporary
capitalism and become fundamentalto it, as real, functioning abstractions.
Such theoretical suggestions have
launched enormous polemics over the
last two decades.
Collectivity and subjectivity are two
poles of the contemporary culture in-
dustry. Virno proposes to rethink the
meaning of this Adornian notion. Cul-
ture industry is a model for the whole
network of production in the post-
Fordist economy in which each subject-
producer is a virtuoso. In fact, in
the actual conditions that have led tothe disappearance of the standardized
molds of the industrial Fordist epoch,
there has been a profusion of perfor-
mances without any pre-established
scripts. This is one of the reasons
why contemporary art provides the
quintessence of virtuosic practices: the
subjectivity of the contemporary artist
is probably the brightest expression of
the flexible, mobile, non-specialized
substance of contemporary living la-bor. However, there is still the need to
identify its antipode, which classically
is the collectivity.
Discourse
The Soviets ofthe Multitude:
On Collectivity andCollective Work
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47Manifesta Journal 8 2010
To outline the opposite pole of subjec-
tivity, I questioned Paolo Virno about
the use of the term multitudeas a
new political articulation of labor that
avoids a repressive unification in the
One (the State, nation, or a cultural
grand style)in order to understand
how it is possible to think its mode
of unity, how new forms of micro-
collectives work and how one might
explain their explosive proliferation
and creativity.
It is particularly interesting for me toask the following questions not from a
post-Fordist position, but rather from
the post-socialist world, being myself
part of a collective initiative that works
in a space between theory, activism and
artistic practices. In the post-socialist
zone, new forms of labor (as well as
poverty, extreme precariousness and
anomie), which replaced the Soviet an-
cient rgime under neo-liberal slogans
with furious, destructive negativity,presented themselves as urgent or
necessary components to the transi-
tion to free market and democracy.
We witnessed the atomization and
fragmentation of post-socialist societ-
ies, the horrifying violence of primi-
tive accumulation (Marx) in the 1990s,
followed by the violence of primitive
political accumulation (Althusser) as
the rebirth of some mutant form of a
repressive State in the 2000s. Maybewe should break up forever with the
historical past of State socialism with
its pompous glorification of monumen-
tal collectivity. However, is it really
the case that, in the end, State social-
ism has to become the communism of
capital, to use Virnos words? Virnos
contribution is especially pertinent
to understanding whether these new
developments are forcing us to recall
those revolutionary political institu-
tions after which the Soviet Union
was named: the soviets, or workers
councils, which served as tools for
democratic self-organization. This is
the context in which we finally came to
discuss The Soviets of the Multitude.
AP:Re-thinking the collective or
collectivity occupies an important
place in your theoretical work. In
A Grammar of the Multitude, you
speak of the necessity for a new
articulation of relations between
the collective and the individual.
That would mean blurring the
borders between the individual and
the collective, private and public incontemporary post-Fordist produc-
tion, understood as a broad-based
experience of the world. You take as
a point of departure Gilbert Simon-
dons conception of the collective as
something that is not opposed to the
individual but, on the contrary, is
a field of radical individualization:
the collective refines our singularity.
Recalling Marxs notion of the so-
cial individual, which presupposesthat the collective (language, social
cooperation, etc.) and the individual
coexist, you elaborate quite a para-
doxical definition of Marxs theory
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48
NOTES
1Lev Semyonovich
Vygotskij (18961934) was
a Soviet psychologist and
internationally-known
founder of cultural-
historical psychology.
Vygotskij was a highly
prolific author. His major
works span six volumes,
written over roughly ten
years, from hisPsychology
of Art(1925) to Thought
and Language (1934). The
philosophical framework
he provided includes
not only insightful
interpretations about the
cognitive role of tools
of mediation, but also
the re-interpretation of
well-known concepts in
psychology such as the
notion of internalization
of knowledge.
as a doctrine of rigorous individu-
alism. On the other hand, taking
into account contemporary forms
of labor, you propose the model of
the individual virtuoso, which,
as it seems, does not presuppose
any other dimension of collectivity
with the exception of the situation
of public performance itself. Can we
think of the realm of the collective
as just a background, or a pre-indi-
vidual material involved in a kind of
teleology of individuation, or is thecollective just a passive audience?
Is the collective deprived of any
constituent, affirmative or creative
function? Could you clarify the place
of the collectivity in your thinking?
PV: I owe a lot to Lev S. Vygotskijs
thoughts on the collective, on the
relation between the collective and
singularity.1 His main idea is that the
social relation precedes and allows forthe formation of the auto-conscious
I. Let me explain: initially there is an
us; yetand here lies the paradox
this us is not equivalent to the sum of
many well-defined Is. In sum, even
if we cannot yet speak of real subjects,
there is still an inter-subjectivity. For
Vygotskij, the mind of the individual,
rather than an incontrovertible depart-
ing point, is the result of a process of
differentiation that happens in a pri-meval society: the real movement of
the development process of the childs
thought is accomplished notfrom the
individual to the socialized, butfrom
the social to the individual. Gradually
the child acquires the collective us,
which we can define as an interpsy-
chical dimension, turning it into an
intrapsychical reality: something
intimate, personal, unique. However,
this introversion of the interpsychi-
cal dimension, this singularization of
the primordial us, does not happen
definitively during childhood: it always
repeats itself during adulthood. Expe-
rience is always measuredeither in
an insurrection, a friendship, or a workof artthrough the transformation of
the interpsychical into intrapsychical.
We constantly have to deal with the
interiorityof the publicand with the
publicity of the interior.
This means that the human nature
cannot be defined through the observa-
tion of a single member of its species,
of his own perceptions, affects and
cognitions. Instead, the human nature
consists of a set of relations establishedbetween a plurality of individuals. To
be more precise: instead of connecting
given singularities, this set of relation-
ships constitutes these single individu-
als as such. Human nature is located
in such a thing thatnot belonging to
any individual mindonly exists in the
relation between the many. To speak of
human nature means to develop a phi-
losophy of the preposition between.
I understand your objection regardingthe virtuoso: in this case transin-
dividuality, the collective dimension,
seems to remain in the background,
reduced to being the stalls of passive
Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo VirnoDiscourse
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49Manifesta Journal 8 2010
spectators, that in the maximum can
applaud or boo the performance they
are seeing.
But is that really the case? Maybe not.
Lets try to consider lartista esecu-
tore (the performing artist) through
Vygotskijs eyes. The audience
with its habitudes, competences and
emotionsconstitutes the interpsychic
ambit, the preliminary us that the
virtuoso introverts, turning it into
something intrapsychic, singular. The
virtuosic execution stages this trans-formation. If we think of contempo-
rary production, we must understand
that each individual is, at the same
time, the artist performing the action
and the audience: he performs indi-
vidually while he assists the others
performances.
In those factories in which cogni-
tive work is predominant and verbal
language constitutes the main produc-
tive instrument, the public is madeof other virtuosi who, in their turn,
head for the stage. At the end, what the
single producer executes is the score,
be it either collective or transindividu-
al. In fact, this score is made of social
cooperation, of the set of relations that
define us, of the faculty of language,
and so on.
AP: Contemporary philosophical
thought proposes critical modelsfor understanding collectivity,
reintroduced under the name of
community (Jean-Luc Nancy,
Giorgio Agamben). This thought
deconstructs politically dangerous
essentialist representations of com-
munity as One (a unified political
body, the Leader, the State). At the
same time, by introducing the logic
of multiplicity and singularity, this
thought confronts the vision of sin-
gularities as active and productive
forces, considering them as a kind
of static being-together of passive
existences exposing themselves one
to another. How does a political
thinking that elaborates the conceptof the multitude relate to this com-
munity discourse?
PV: The thought of community car-
ries a basic defect: it neglects the prin-
ciple of individualization, that is, the
process of the formation of singularities
from something all its elements share.
The logic of multiplicity and singularity
is not sufficient, and we need to clarify
the premise, or the condition of pos-sibility, of a multitude of singularities.
Enouncing it as a provocation: we need
to say something about the One that
allows the existence of many unrepeat-
able individuals. The discourse about
the community prudishly eludes the
discourse about the One. Yet, the politi-
cal existence of the many as many
is rooted in a homogeneous and shared
ambit; it is hacked out of an impersonal
background.It is with respect to the One that the
opposition between the categories
of people and multitude clearly
emerges. Most importantly, there is
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a reversion in the order of things:
while the people tend to the One, the
multitude derives from the One. For
the people, the One is a promise; for the
many, it is a premise.
Furthermore, it also mutes the defini-
tion of what is common or shared. The
One around which the people gravitate
is the State, the sovereign, the volont
gnrale. Instead, the One carried on
the backs of the multitude consists of
the language, the intellect as a public or
interpsychical resource, of the genericfaculties of the species. If the multi-
tude shuns the unity of the State, this
is simply because the former is related
to a completely different One, which is
preliminary instead of being conclu-
sive. We could say: the One of the mul-
titude collimates in many ways with
that transindividual reality that Marx
called the general intellect or the
social brain. The general intellectcor-
responds to the moment in which thebanal human capacity of thinking with
words becomes the main productive
force of matured capitalism. However,
it can also constitute the foundations of
a republic that has lost the characteris-
tics of stately sovereignty.
In conclusion, the thought of the
community, even if laudable in many
respects, is an impolitic thought. It
takes into account only some emotionaland existential aspects of the multi-
tude: in short, a lifestyle. It is obviously
important, but what it is fundamental
to understand the work and the days
of the multitude as the raw matter to
define a well-rounded political model
that moves away from that mediocre
artefact of the modern State, which
is at once rudimentary (regarding
the social cooperation) and ferocious.
What is fundamental is to conceive the
relation between the One and theMany
in a radically different way from that
of Hobbes, Rousseau, Lenin or Carl
Schmitt.
AP
: Your argument related toour subject also develops on the
level of the critical appropriation
of concepts in German philosophi-
cal anthropology (Arnold Gelen,
Helmut Plessner). As you say, what
we nowadays call human nature
is the basic raw material for the
capitalist production. Human
nature interpreted as a set of
bio-anthropological invariants,
as a kind of potentiality referring tothe faculty of language, to neoteny
as the retention of juvenile traits
in adult behavior, to openness to
the world (i.e. the absence of fixed
environment), etc. You state that
these anthropological invariants
become sociological traits of a
post-Fordist labor force, expressing
themselves as permanent precari-
ousness, flexibility and the need to
act in unpredictable situations.Post-Fordist capitalism does not
alienate human nature, but rather
reveals it at the center of contempo-
rary production, and by the same
Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo VirnoDiscourse
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2Chto delat/What is to
be done? (www.chtodelat.
org) was founded in
2003 in Petersburg by a
group of artists, critics,
philosophers and writers
from Petersburg, Moscow,
and Nizhny Novgorod
with the goal of merging
political theory, art and
activism. Since then, Chto
delat has been publishing
an English-Russian
newspaper on issues
central to engaged culture,
with a special focus on the
relationship between a re-
politicization of Russian
intellectual culture and
its broader international
context.
move, exposes it to apparatuses of
exploitation and control. Former
ways of easing the painful uncer-
tainty and instability of human be-
havior through ritual mechanisms
and traditional social institutions
melt into air. How does this new
moment change the specificity of
collective work today? Is it possible
to speak of the collective dimension
as a practice of self-organization,
mutual aid and protection without
any institutional framework? Canwe say that this collectivity is now
forming in the context of life outside
of the sites of production, in the
space of socialization outside of
the working place?
PV: Let us agree on the use of the word
institution. Is it a term that belongs
exclusively to the vocabulary of the
adversary? I dont think so. I believe
that the concept of institution is also(and perhaps mainly) decisive to the
politics of the multitude. Institutions
constitute the way in which our species
protects itself from uncertainty and
with which it creates rules to protect its
own praxis. Therefore, an institution
is also a collective, such as Chto delat/
What is to be done?2
The institution is the mother tongue.
Institutions are the rituals we use to
heal and resolve the crisis of a com-munity. The true debate should not be
between institutional and anti-institu-
tional forces; instead, it should identify
the institutions that lay beyond the
monopoly of the political decision
incarnated by the State. It should
single out the institutions that meet the
general intellect referred by Marx,
that social brain that is, at the same
time, the main productive force and a
principle of republican organization.
The modern central state is facing a
radical crisis, but it has not ceased to
reproduce itself through a series of
disturbing metamorphosis. The state
of permanent exception is surely one
of the ways in which sovereignty sur-vives itself, indefinitely postponing its
decline. The same applies to what Marx
said about joint-stock companies: these
constituted an overtaking of private
property operated on the same basis of
private property. To put it differently,
joint-stock companies allowed the over-
coming of private property but, at the
same time, articulated this possibility in
such a way that they qualitatively rein-
forced and developed that same privateproperty. In our case, we could say: the
state of permanent exception indicates
an overcoming of the form of the State
on the same basis of its statuality. It is
a perpetuation of the State, of sover-
eignty, but also the exhibition of its
irreversible crisis, of the full maturity
of a past statal republic.
So, I believe that the state of excep-
tion allows us to reflect on the institu-
tions of the multitude, about theirpossible functioning and their rules.
An example: in the state of exception,
the difference between matters of
right (de jure) and matters of fact
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(de facto) is so attenuated that it almost
disappears. Once more, the rules
become empirical data that can even
acquire a normative power. Now, this
relative distinction between norms and
facts that nowadays produces special
laws and such prisons as Guantanamo
can suffer an alternative declension,
becoming a constitutional principle
of the public sphere of the multitude.
The decisive point is that the norm
should exhibit not only the possibility
of returning into the ambit of facts,but also to its factual origin. In short,
it should exhibit its revocability and
its substitutability; each rule should
present itself as both a unit of measure
of the praxis and as something that
should continuously be re-evaluated.
AP: On an empirical level, the
specificity of contemporary
production saturated by mass
intellectualityboth in main-stream currents of business and
cultural industry, and on the side
of alternative or resistant politi-
cal and cultural formsconsists
of the formation of relatively small
collectives, workgroups, research
teams, organizational committees,
various collaborations, initiatives,
etc. They have definite and more or
less long-term tasks like realizing a
project, preparing a publication or aconference, designing an exhibition
or, on the other hand, organizing a
social movement with regard to this
or that pretext, initiating protests
around this or that event, etc. How
would you locate this proliferation
of micro-collectives in a broader
context of recent developments in
post-Fordist production?
PV: Micro-collectives, workgroups,
research teams, etc. are half-produc-
tive, half-political structures. If we
want, they are the no mans land in
which social cooperation stops being
exclusively an economic resource and
starts appearing as a public, non-stately sphere. If examined as produc-
tive realities, the micro-collectives
you mention have mainly the merit of
socializing the entrepreneurial func-
tion: instead of being separated and
hierarchically dominant, this function
is progressively reabsorbed by the
living labor, thus becoming a pervasive
element of social cooperation.
We are all entrepreneurs, even if an in-
termittent, occasional, contingent way.But, as I was saying, micro-collectives
have an ambivalent character: apart
from being productive structures, they
are also germs of political organiza-
tion. What is the importance of such
ambivalence? What can it suggest in
terms of the theory of the organiza-
tion? In my opinion, this is the crucial
issue: nowadays the subversion of the
capitalistic relations of production can
manifest itself through the institu-tion of a public, non-stately sphere,
of a political community oriented
towards the general intellect. In order
to allow this subversion, the distinctive
Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo VirnoDiscourse
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features of post-Fordist production
(the valorization of its own faculty of
language, a fundamental relation with
the presence of the other, etc.) demand
a radically new form of democracy.
Micro-collectives are the symptomas
fragile and contradictory as they may
beof an exodus, of an enterprising
subtraction of the rules of wage labor.
AP: In the contemporary creative
industry, collective work often
takes the paradigmatic form ofbrainstorming. It consists of the
discussion and production of both
ideas and solutions, even if a con-
siderable part of them are rejected
after critical examination, though
this work sometimes opens the door
for unexpected innovations. In the
conditions of Fordism, massive
collectivitiesorganized through
a strict disciplinary division of
laborproduced the well-known ef-fect of the multiplication of separate
productive forces of workers (the
whole is more than the sum of the
parts). Maybe it would be possible
to make a (disputable) assumption:
under the conditions of post-Ford-
ism, collective work can be orga-
nized through subtraction when
the result of the work is inferior to
the sum of the collective effort. This
becomes a sort of exception, anunexpected innovation (the whole
is less than the sum of the parts).
On the other hand, if not considered
in terms of products, such collective
work produces a feeling of strong
subjectivity and strength, valorizing
each member of the collective. What
is your opinion? Would it be possible
to connect this subtractive mode
of functioning with the disap-
pearance of a measure for work in
contemporary production?
PV: Thats the perfect way of saying
it, that in post-Fordism, the whole is
less than the sum of the partsI will
repeat this expression from now on. Itis a formula that correctly expresses
the copiousness of social cooperation
regarding its economical-productive
finality. We are currently witnessing a
phenomenon in collective intelligence
that is identical to what happened
thirty years ago in Italy, with the Sicil-
ian oranges, when tons of fruit were
destroyed in order to keep prices high.
But this comparison only works to a
certain extent. Nowadays, the quota ofcollective intelligence that is thrown
away in the production of goods is not
physically destroyed, but somehow
remains there, as a ghost, as a non-
used resource that is still available.
The power that is freed by the sum of
the parts, even if not expressed in its
whole, meet a very different destiny.
Sometimes it becomes frustration and
melancholic inertia, or it generates
pitiless competition and hystericalambition. In other cases, it can be used
as a propeller for subversive political
action. Also, here we need to bear in
mind an essential ambivalence: the
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same phenomenon can become both
a danger and a salvation. The copi-
ousness of collective intelligence is,
altogether, heimlichfamiliar and
propitiousand unheimlichdisturb-
ing and extraneous.
AP: In one of your statements in
which you discuss the contemporary
culture industry, you argue that
post-Fordist capitalism provides
relative autonomy for creativity.3
It can only capture and appropri-ate its products, commercializing
and instrumentalizing the inno-
vations emerging in subcultures,
in ghettosalternatives to the
mainstreamas well as, we can
suppose, in the field of production
of critical knowledge and art. Refer-
ring to Marxs dichotomy, you say
that this means a return to formal
subsumption. Therefore, capital-
ists do not organize the whole chainof production process, they just cap-
ture, and commodify, spontaneous,
self-organized social collabora-
tions and their products. This thesis
seems to be contrary to the position
of Negri and Hardt. They describe
postmodern biopolitical produc-
tion as an effect of real subsump-
tion of labor under capital. Could
you explain your argument and the
differences of your position regard-ing this question?
PV: Those who study communications
are very attentive to the so-called
pragmatic paradoxes. What is that
all about? Of exhortations or intrinsi-
cally contradictory orders, such as
I order you to be spontaneous. The
consequence is an obvious antinomy: I
cannot be spontaneous if I am obeying
to an order and, vice-versa, I cannot
obey to an order if I am behaving in
a spontaneous way. Alas, something
similar happens in contemporary pro-
duction in which there is the impera-
tive to be efficacious through behav-
iors that cannot be conformed to anypredetermined obligation. To show this
paradox, I sometimes speak of a return
of the formal subsumption of labor
undercapital. With this expression,
Marx designates that moment in the in-
dustrial revolution in which capitalists
appropriated a production that was still
organized in a traditional way (crafts-
manship, small rural property, etc). It
is obvious that, in our case, it is a very
particular formal subsumption, forthe capitalists appropriate not some-
thing that already existed but, on the
contrary, an innovation that can only
exist with the recognition of a certain
autonomy of social cooperation. This
is a rough similarity. It is obvious,
however, that the paradox I order you
to be spontaneous tests the contempo-
raneous social conflict: the match point
lies in the stress of either I order you
or of to be spontaneous.In our present time, the labor force
enriches the capital only ifit takes part
in a form of social cooperation that is
wider than the one presupposed by the
Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo VirnoDiscourse
3See, for example, Sonja
Lavaert and Pascal Gielen,
The Dismeasure of Art:
An Interview with Paolo
Virno in Open. Cahier on
Art and the Public Domain
17, 2009. http://www.
skor.nl/article-4178-nl.
html?lang=en.
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55Manifesta Journal 8 2010
factory or the office. In post-Fordism,
the efficient worker includesin the
execution of his own laborattitudes,
competences, wisdoms, tastes and
inclinations matured somewhere else,
outside that time specifically dedicated
to the production of goods. Nowadays,
he who deserves the title of Stakhanov
is he who is professionally entangled
in a net of relations that exceeds (or
contradicts) the social restrictions of
his given profession.4
AP: As is well known, many avant-
garde movements in twentieth-cen-
tury art were organized by the logic
of groups and collectives, which
claimed that their programs aimed
at revolutionizing the traditional
aesthetic forms (dada, surrealism,
Soviet avant-garde, situationism,
etc). Over the past twenty years,
artists and curators have visibly
become more and more interestedin collective work, and they make
this interest the subject of research
and representation in their practice.
Probably, the logic of innovation
in contemporary art depends on
collective work and co-authorship,
and the artistic collectivity is not
just a matter of some Party-style
sharing of a common program. You
work on a theory of innovation in
your recent texts, which has beenpartially published in the book
Multitude between Innovation and
Negation. How do you take into ac-
count this dimension of collectivity
and co-authorship? Could we say
that the moments of co-innovation
are simultaneously the moments
in which the subjectivization of the
collective takes place?
PV: I believe that there are two main
differences between the avant-gardes
of the first part of the twentieth cen-
tury and the present collective artistic
practice. The first concerns the relation
with reproducibility of the work of
art. Walter Benjamin noted that thedadaists and surrealists anticipated,
with their expressive inventions, the
functioning of techniques that, within
a short period of time, would guarantee
the unlimited reproduction of artistic
objects. The historical avant-gardes
tried to manage the transformation
of the unicity attributed to the aura of
the work of art into the condition of
seriality in which the prototypethe
original modellost its weight. Obvi-ously, the present collective artistic
work accepts, from the beginning,
technical reproduction, using this
characteristic as the starting point to
produce a sparkle of unicity, of unmis-
takable singularity. Using a slogan, I
would say that the challenge is a sort
of unicity without aura: a non-orig-
inal unicity that originates inand
exclusively inthe anonymous and
impersonal character of the technicalreproduction.
The second difference concerns poli-
tics. The historical avant-gardes were
inspired by the centralized political
4Alexey Stakhanov
(19061977) was a miner
in the Soviet Union,
member of the CPSU (1936)
and Hero of Socialist
Labor (1970). He became
a celebrity in 1935 as
part of a movement that
was intended to increase
worker productivity
and demonstrate the
superiority of the socialist
economic system.
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parties. In contrast, todays collective
practices are connected to the decen-
tered and heterogeneous net that com-
poses post-Fordist social cooperation.
Reusing your nice formula, I would
say that co-authorship is an attempt to
correct on an aesthetic level the reality
of a production in which the whole is
less than the sum of the parts. It is an
attempt to exhibit what would be the
sum of the parts if it was not reduced to
thatwhole.
AP:In conclusion, Id like to ask
you a question that departs from
the local situation I share with my
friends from the Chto delat/What
is to be done? group as well as other
new initiatives, movements, politi-
cal and artistic collectives from the
post-socialist, or post-Soviet world.
Here, collectivity has a different
wager in the course of the history of
the revolutionary movementfromthe soviets (worker councils) as
organs of direct democracy and
self-government, to their function
as organizers of the production
process in the early USSR, and
finally their bureaucratization and
submission to Party control. We are
also aware of Stalins collectiviza-
tion. This complicated historical
experience also had an artistic
dimensionjust think of Alexan-der Rodchenkos famous idea of
workers clubs as places of mass
engagement and politization. Nowa-
days, the activists of new political
movements in post-Soviet countries
try to rethink this political, histori-
cal and aesthetic experience. What
is your relation with the experience
of the soviets? Was it important for
your political formation?
PV: Before saying something about
the soviets, Id like to gesture to the
political-intellectual tradition from
whichwithout meriting itI come.
The critique of that modern barbarity
that is the wage labor, dependent on theemployer, the critique of that monop-
oly of the political decision that is the
Statethese were our references in the
1960s and 1970s, and they still are to-
day. These references made us enemies
of the real and ideal socialism. From
the beginning, our tradition longed for
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dis-
solution of the CPSU. It was divorced
from the culture and the values of the
labor movement, and this allowed itto understand the meaning of the labor
fights against the wage. It recognized
capitalisms devotion to the perma-
nent revolution, to the continuing
innovation of the labor process and the
ways of life, in order to avoid astonish-
ment or lament, since the production
of surplus value is no longer connected
to the factory and sovereignty does not
coincide any more with the nation-
states.No nostalgia, hence. On the contrary,
there is a lasting sense of relief for the
fall of a regime founded on the cancer-
ous metastasis of the State and on the
Alexei Penzin interviews Paolo VirnoDiscourse
8/4/2019 Virno Soviets of the Multitude[1]
12/12
57Manifesta Journal 8 2010
All images:
Videostills from
2+2 Practicing Godard
by Chto delat / What is
to be done? (director:
Dmitry Vilensky, graphics:
Nikolay Oleynikov) 2009
why not, councils (soviets in Rus-
sian). Except that, contrary to Hobbess
negative judgment, here we surely are
not dealing with ephemeral appear-
ances. The leagues, the assemblies, the
sovietsin short, the organs of non-
representative democracygive politi-
cal expression to the productive coop-
eration that has at its core the general
intellect. The soviets of the multitude
produce a conflict with the States ad-
ministrative apparatuses, with the aim
of eating away at its prerogatives andabsorbing its functions. Those same
basic resourcesknowledge, commu-
nication, etc.that are the order of the
day in the post-Fordist production are
translated into political praxis.
What I mean is that the word soviet,
which became unpronounceable due to
solid historical reasons, has now, and
maybe only now, acquired a pregnant
meaning. We can only realistically
speak of the soviet at the dawn of theState, in the period of the cogni-
tive work in which we must valorize
whatever is singular and unique in the
experience of each member of our spe-
cies. Of course, to say that, we need to
find other words.
glorification of labor (of that work that
any laborer desired to suppress). Say-
ing so, now we can speak of the soviets.
The problem is: how do you articulate a
public sphere that is no longer connect-
ed to the State? What are the institu-
tions of the multitude?
The democracy of the multitude takes
seriously the diagnosis that Carl
Schmitt proposed, somewhat bitterly,
in the last years of his life: The era
of the State is now coming to an end
[]. The State as a model of politicalunity, the State as title-holder of the
most extraordinary of all monopo-
lies, in other words, the monopoly of
political decision-making, is about to
be dethroned. With one important
addition: the monopoly of decision
making can only really be taken away
from the State if it ceases once and for
all to be a monopoly. The public sphere
of the multitude is a centrifugal force.
In other words, it excludes not onlythe continued existence, but also the
reconstitution in any form of a unitary
political body. But here, the crucial
question returns: which democratic
bodies embody this centrifugal force?
Hobbes felt a well-known contempt for
those irregular political systems in
which the multitude adumbrated itself:
Nothing but leagues, or sometimes
mere assemblies of people, without
union to any particular designee, nordetermined by obligations of one to
another. Well, the democracy of the
multitude consists precisely of such
institutions: leagues, assemblies and,